This week had a heavy focus on hotel free night certificates. From ways to find and book SLH properties with your Hilton certificates to great uses of IHG certs and how you can and not use Marriott certificates and all the way down to our thoughts about the best of the hot hotel card offers, we covered certificates from numerous angles. Also read about our updated values for several types of hotel points and a lot more in this week’s Frequent Miler Week in Review.
This week on the Frequent Miler blog…
How to find SLH hotels bookable with Hilton points & free night certificates
The new partnership with SLH is a huge boost for Hilton Honors fans. However, finding availability at SLH properties can be a struggle. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be difficult! In this post, Greg lays out how to find availability at SLH properties (or really any Hilton property) by leveraging the power of the right award search tools. In some cases, SLH properties can make for an outstanding use of a Hilton Free Night Certificate — so much so that we’re more excited about the current Hilton card offers than any others.
How To Use Marriott Free Night Certificates (And How They Can’t Be Used)
Stephen wrote an excellent post about how you can and can not use Marriott Free Night Certificates. Whether you’re new to Marriott Free Night Certificates or relatively seasoned with them, this post probably has a couple of good tips for you. One that caught my eye was Stephen’s tip about how the system won’t always apply the certificates in a way that makes sense, which could end up costing you points. I ran into a situation that I thought was exactly that last night and I had to do the math twice to make sure that Marriott wasn’t charging me more points than it should. One other tip to bear in mind is that when you cancel, sometimes a certificate may not unattach from the canceled stay (in fairness, I haven’t heard a data point about that in a long time, but now I watch my own certs closely) — so keep track of your certs and call to get it back in your account if necessary.
60+ best places to use IHG 40K free night certificates in the US
If you’ve got IHG free night certificates and you’re looking for a place to use them domestically, this post could be a great reference point for some vacation inspiration. Tim collected an impressive list of great properties that might be bookable with your free night certificate(s). Feel free to add your own favorites in the comments.
What are Choice points worth?
In a continuation of our project to update our Reasonable Redemption Values for hotels, we took a look at Choice Privileges. Surprisingly, the RRV for Choice Privileges points barely changed from our previous analysis in 2021, dropping from the previous 0.68c per point to a new 0.67c per point. In other words, in 50% of ordinary domestic situations, you’re still going to get about that same value or better when using your Choice Privileges points — though be aware that if you cherry pick your awards, you may be able to get closer to 1cpp for the best uses.
What are Hilton points worth?
You may be particularly surprised to hear that our Reasonable Redemption Value for Hilton Honors points hasn’t moved even a hundredth of a cent — though truthfully, you shouldn’t be very surprised. Yes, we have asserted that the SLH partnership is huge for Hilton points holders, but our RRV analysis only looks at properties in the United States, so I don’t think any SLH properties came into the analysis. Furthermore, since Hilton prices awards at their own properties dynamically, it shouldn’t be too surprising that the median number would be constant — while there may have been some change for some of the properties above or below the median, I’m not shocked to hear that those changes haven’t done much to the mid-point for Hilton redemptions. Still, in my mind, this reinforces the value of using Hilton points for SLH properties if you enjoy luxury stays as they provide many opportunities for much better than normal value for Hilton points.
What are IHG points worth?
Like Hilton, IHG has moved to a dynamically priced model, so I wasn’t shocked to see that the value of IHG points hasn’t changed more than a hundredth of a cent per point overall. While I’m sure that some properties have decreased the value of their awards (particularly at peak times), the overall trend within the United States is that you’ll still get about 0.62c per point or better about half the time.
A beginner’s guide to searching for partner award flights
Moving to flights, if you’re a beginner in redeeming your rewards for award travel and wondering where to start, this is the post for you. Originally published a couple of years ago, we’ve updated this beginner’s guide that explains airline alliances and how to understand and search for partner awards. The nice thing is that due to the proliferation of award search tools, it can be much easier than ever to search awards from multiple starting airports to help you narrow down award availability.
Virgin Flying Club can’t book awards on Air France or KLM; “Expected” to work again at “the start” of August 2024
Unfortunately, one popular type of award has recently disappeared. This post is just a quick read, but since we published a couple of posts earlier this month / last month about booking Air France and KLM award flights via Virgin Atlantic, I wanted to share this important update in our week in review. Sadly, it is impossible to book Air France and KLM via Virgin Atlantic flying club for the time being. While bookings are “expected” to return in “early August”, but it remains to be seen how that shakes out.
JetBlue Mint Airbus A321neo Review London to Boston
I was excited to read Greg’s review of JetBlue Mint aboard the A321neo because I have an award flight of my own on the same product coming up soon. I was glad to see that his review was mostly positive. I’m a little concerned that Greg reports the seat not being entirely comfortable in a reclined / bed position because I’m counting on the whole family getting as much sleep as possible, but I’m hopeful that it won’t keep us up even if the seat is a little firm.
Downgrade paths: How to keep your card but break up with your annual fee or find a better fit
Credit card annual fee creep is real — cards just keep getting more expensive. Not happy with your current card? Rather than canceling it, you can probably product change to something that’s a better fit for your needs. We often get questions from readers about their downgrade options, so we wrote this post to serve as a guide for which cards can be downgraded and what options you’ve got when it comes to that downgrade. In many cases, it makes more sense to keep the account open and change to something else than to cancel the credit line entirely.
Podcast: Frequent Miler origin story – Carrie’s story | Coffee Break Ep18 | 7-16-24
Ever wonder how Carrie came to be Frequent Miler’s creative director extraordinaire? On this week’s coffee break, Carrie joins us to discuss how she came to know Greg, how we begged her to help us, and what she’s thought about working with the Frequent Miler team.
Podcast: Hot Hotel Card Offers | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep264 | 7-19-24
On this week’s full-length Frequent Miler on the Air, we discuss the numerous hot hotel credit card offers that have recently hit the market. Should you pick up the Sonesta card, a Hilton card, one of the new Choice Privileges offers, or perhaps something else? We compare and contrast the latest offers.
That’s it for this week at Frequent Miler. Keep an eye out for this week’s last chance deals as we approach the end of the month.
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